Random Nuclear Strikes

From the Reagan Diaries:

Thursday, March 19

The auto task force met with Cabinet — still some disagreement about any quotas on Japanese imports. …The V.P. summed it up nicely. He said we’re all for free enterprise but woudl any of us find fault if Japan announced without any request from us that they were going to reduce their export of autos to America?

There was no dissent. I told them I’d heard enough I would make a decision. Privately I told Al Haig to call Amb. Mike Mansfield and have Mike advise “Ito” before his visit that we were threatened by a bill in Cong. to set a quota. An announcement by Japan of a voluntary cutback could head that off. We’ll see what happens.

Al then told me he felt he was being undercut by other agencies etc. I worry that he has something of a complex about this. Anyway I’ve arranged that he & I meet privately 3x a week.

–Ronald Reagan

Less than 100 days in and Haig’s Nixonian palace-intrigue habits are already evident.

I don’t know about you, but all those ecosocialist quotes of the day had me pretty bummed. Time for some more uplifting quotes for a while, says I!

Like this one. Remember the Atlanta Child Murders?

Friday, March 13 [1981]

Nancy off to N.Y. I’m to join her there. The Rev. Jesse Jackson announces he’s staging a march on Wash. Mon. demanding help for Atlanta in that 19 month tragedy of the murders of black children which has so far numbered 20 with 1 missing. Atlanta has a financial problem due to $100,000 a month overtime for police. What Jesse apparently doesn’t know is that we’ve already given Atlanta about $1 mil. and have roughly 40 F.B.I. agents in there on the case. Today I went to the press briefing room and read a statement detailing this & then announced we were giving another $1 1/2 million & that V.P. G. Bush was going personally to Atlanta.

Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries

This is an absolutely excellent book. It’s loaded with so much quotable stuff that you’re going to be seeing a lot of it here. The editor, Douglas Brinkley, gives some background:

When I first saw the White House diaries at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, I was astounded. Lined up on a research table, all five volumes resemble a handsome half-set of an encyclopedia…. In physical appearance, the diaries were hardcover books, 8 1/2 by 11, bound in maroon and brown leather with the presidential seal embossed on the center of the front and the name RONALD WILSON REAGAN in gold lettering at the bottom right…. Within the pages themselves, you see immediately that Regan had neat, rounded handwriting, done in ink that is variously blue or black…. Cross-outs are rare. Economical to the core, Reagan filled every page to the very bottom. …Nancy Reagan explains that her husband kept the diaries in their second-floor White House study next to their bedroom. When traveling, he’d bring a volume with him, often writing while on Air Force One. “We just wanted a way to capture the moment and our feelings before we were whisked on to the next day,” Nancy explained, “so we could savor it a little more.” For several years after their return to California, the Reagans would often sit together in their den after dinner, reading aloud from their diaries and reminiscing about their White House years.

You’re in for a treat, folks. This is hands down the best book purchase I’ve made in the past decade.

I haven’t been keeping up with these lately, and to be perfectly honest, while I do have a few pages more of whacked-out eco-socialist quotes, I’m not sure that posting them would further the point I’ve attempted to make. Your opinions are, of course, welcome.

So whilst I ponder where I want this category to go, here is a random quote I found a while back, I believe, at Samizdata.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Thomas Jefferson